This Saturday morning cartoon goes out to the folks who inspired it, among them Elizabeth Bear, Leah Bobbet, and Gemma Files, who, last weekend at Readercon, gave us clear explanations of the subtext evident in their work. Using yoga.

Charade: This Oscar winning short shows that sometimes getting your point across is just not an obvious thing to do. (4:44 minutes)

The Cycle of Art: So you’ve just created your masterpiece. Here’s what’s going to happen to it. (3:09 minutes)

Pencil Test: Long before Galyn Susman starred in The Movie Vanishes, she worked on this short using a Mac computer ad (I imagine) lots of patience and hard work. (3:03 minutes)

Day & Night: One of the reasons for Pixar’s success is that they know they are following a century old tradition of animated cinema. This film probably demonstrates it better than any others, while going somewhere not seen before. (5:51 minutes)

Brave is Pixar’s 13th feature but the studio started by making short films and they are still an important part of the studio. John Lasseter has stated that making shorts was a great way for him to gain experience as a filmmaker and that this is why Pixar continues to make short films: they are at the root of the studio success and I’d like to take a quick look at two early works that were key to making Pixar what it is today.

Sunstone: In the late 70s, Ed Emshwiller walked into the New York Institute of Technology and said he wanted to make a 3 hour computer graphics film. Once the staff stopped laughing, they told him 3 minutes was more realistic. So Emshwiller collaborated with eventual Pixar founder Alvy Ray Smith and produced this short. (2:55 minutes)

The Movie Vanishes: Can you imagine a world without Toy Story 2? The crew a Pixar can, here’s the story of how it almost came to be. (2:26 minutes)

Pixar films are known for being computer animated, but they are loved for the stories they tell and the characters that live in them. To get to where the studio is now, they had to combine technical know how and creativity. And no two people better represent these facets of Pixar than Ed Catmull and John Lasseter.

Volume Visualization on Image Computer: Before they became known for making films, Pixar’s bread and butter was selling high-end 3D computer visualization stations. This is a demo reel used to show the capabilities of the system. (6:01 minutes)

The Beach Chair: An early short done at Pixar while they were still testing the waters of filmmaking. (0:29 minutes)

If there’s anything SF readers and watchers, gamers and otakus enjoy more than their particular hobbies, it’s getting together to talk with like-minded people. Doing so on the web is great, as is doing it in person.

What follows is a list of some of the events that will happen over the month of April. It is by no means comprehensive, but I do try for geographical and thematic variety. Feel free to add events near you, large or small, in the comments.